In discussion of the pedagogy of misconceptions one thing has been missing,
research citations. Students have successfully dispelled some
misconceptions by studying the historical development of ideas. This was
done in an optics class. Students achieved much better understanding by
studying the historical misconceptions. In the process of seeing
misconceptions that lined up with their ideas and how science learned better
ways of looking at the subject students managed to dispel their own
misconceptions. One of the more interesting things about the study was that
students seemed to like the course better than some of the methods commonly
applied in other research based courses. The historical material dispelled
misconceptions in a more painless fashion. This article is in AJP July 2000
Volume 68, Issue S1 pp. S3-S15 The influence of an historically oriented
course on students' content knowledge in optics evaluated by means of
facets-schemes analysis, Galili et al.
Other research has shown that refutational text that brings out the common
misconceptions and then refutes them achieved better conceptual
understanding. This is in JRST Vol 31 #9 pp 933-946 (1994) The Role of
Instructional Variables in Conceptual Change in High School Physics Topics,
Hynd et al.